All good writing begins with terrible first efforts.
(Anne Lamott)

Thoughts upon reading a heap of undergraduate papers

My students frequently double-space between paragraphs. They never used to do this. I cannot decide if this is simply a lame attempt to make the paper seem longer or if it reflects something about how young(er) people have acquired writing skills in the Internet age.

They also like to use the word "amongst." Where does this come from? I don't hear them walking around saying "thou" or "forsooth."

I blame Sarah Palin for my students' new love of the phrases "calling out" and "shout-out." As in, "McCain called out Obama on his ties to William Ayres" or "LBJ gave a shout-out to the marchers in Selma." !

Comments

Re: double spacing, Word 2007 defaults to a double space between paragraphs. No other version of Word did this, hence "they never used to do this." You can change the formatting on any individual document or change the default, but most students don't. I take it less as a sign of how they learned to write than how they let their writing tools determine how they write rather than taking any sort of control (or responsibility).

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